


We would skip this one, if we were you -- it’s more of a supporting document, really

by trifles



Category: Monty Python RPF
Genre: Meta, Surreal, Time Loop, Timey-Wimey, Writer's Block, Writers, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-13
Updated: 2010-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trifles/pseuds/trifles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Move along, move along. There's nothing to see here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We would skip this one, if we were you -- it’s more of a supporting document, really

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ix_tab](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ix_tab/gifts).



> We’re very sorry to tell you this, but what you are about to read is not actually a Monty Python story. There was a timing error, or a default, or something similar. The best we could do for you was a last-minute story in the _Maurice_ fandom, centering around the character of Anne. Again, we’re sorry for the inconvenience; please feel free to search the rest of the archive for something more to your liking.
> 
>  
> 
> [A slightly more real note: further and more complete discussion of this fic, including acknowledgments, credit lines, and cheat codes, can be found here: [parsnips.livejournal.com](http://parsnips.livejournal.com/17833.html).]

_Terry Jones has come unstuck in time._

[back](http://www.lexneva.name/blargh/unstuck.html)

  
  


[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#4)

Terry fell asleep at some point, and woke again with the dawn. Graham was smoking his pipe, and watching him. Graham looked a little like a hedonistic Christ-figure in the early morning light, the smoke curling up around his head in aureolic glory and nearly making Terry forget just how very much he wanted to throw up everything he'd ever eaten.

This didn't make sense, though. Graham was dead.

Terry'd fallen asleep at a desk, his head on a notebook. The page on which he'd been lying, on which he somehow clearly remembered writing something excellent, said only:

 _Terry Jones has come unstuck in time._

Terry made an inquiring noise in Graham's direction, which Graham correctly interpreted. He pointed at the notebook with his pipe and said, "We'd been talking about literature that specifically addresses space and time. You got snippy after I brought up Doctor Who, even though I was ahead anyway after the Fowles and Sterne references. You can only coast so long on Pynchon before you have to prove you've actually read it."

Terry was torn between opposing thoughts. The loudest, most worried one sounded just like Alison, and it said, _What is happening here._ The other, though, wasn't fazed at all, and what came out was, "Is it time for breakfast?"

Graham shrugged.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#2)

Terry fell asleep at eight a.m.; he woke again at noon. The sun was harsher than it should be, the air more French than English. He was still here. He threw the gin bottles (two empty, sitting on the mysterious desk) into a passing dustbin in the hall. Graham went missing at two-forty, and returned with another bottle at four-thirty. Terry called Alison at five, and got nothing but a dial tone. At seven, they ordered room service, and Terry stuffed another empty under the cart before the server left. They ate calamari, and shouted down for ice cream, and nothing was written at all.

[back](http://www.lexneva.name/blargh/thedream.html)

Terry opened his eyes. England. Thank God.

But this room wasn't quite right. And there was a telephone receiver in his hand. And he was speaking.

 _Graham? It's Terry J._

 _Oh. Hello. Michael got around to calling you?_

 _He said you were threatening letters again._

These were words he'd never spoken before, words he didn't want to say now, and yet somehow they were happening without him.

 _It's called being_ helpful _, Terry, we've all got to pull our weight. Anyway, I was expecting Eric next._

 _He's gone missing._

 _Ah? Shame._

 _Listen, I-- I've got shit to work with here, nothing's coming out right, and we need enough sketches to actually fill the episodes we've already been granted. Tell me you've got something._

 _I think I have some of John's work around here--_

 _I wasn't really looking for something by John. Have you got anything?_

 _No._

As frightening and uncertain as this was, he couldn't help but press the receiver hard against his ear, catching Graham's voice.

 _Right. Right, then._

 _Is that all?_

 _...I'm-- I'm going to Biarritz. France. I'm going to France to write, and you should come with me. Just for a day or two. We can lock ourselves in a hotel room until a sketch is done, and I'll verbally abuse you or whatever it is John used to do if you'll just give me a leg up with this damned thing. Yes. Will you come?_

 _Biarritz is in Basque territory._

 _It has a beach._

 _This is a pathetically transparent ploy._

 _What if it works? The writing, I mean, not the ploy._

 _...I'll think about it. Get a boat or something, I want to see the water._

Terry closed his eyes and swallowed.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#14)

Terry opened his eyes, and he was in France. Biarritz, apparently. He'd never been.

The clock said half-past three in the morning. Graham was splayed the wrong way round on one of the beds, and Terry was talking about post-structuralism. The phone rang, and Terry answered. Eric.

"All right over there?"

"Eric, you bastard." Graham raised his eyebrows, but Terry shook his head. "I thought you joined the RAF."

"I did. They said I was forty years too late. Slept with Graham yet?"

"Piss off," Terry said. "And no."

"Pity," Eric said blithely, "might be fun. Gotten anything written yet?"

Terry hung up on him, and looked at Graham. Graham looked back, and seemed about to ask a question that Terry didn't know the answer to.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#9)

Then it was ten o'clock at night. The same day, or perhaps the next. He couldn't remember when he'd last seen Alison, or England, or anything normal. The phone was ringing, but both he and Graham were ignoring it in favor of writing something together.

As he scrawled words across his notebook, the part of Terry that was stuck observing noticed that it was a draft for the Mr Neutron sketch, from the last-but-one episode of Python. At least, it had all the characters, and much of the same dialogue. It was subtly different, though, in ways he had trouble identifying. Was this an early draft that he just didn't remember? Was it Mike's work? He and Mike had written this one in a pub in Brixton, hashing out their storylines and spending as much of the Beeb's money as they could on exterior shots and costumes and live animals.

But he was in Biarritz, now, and dead Graham was sitting on a chair facing the ocean and making him justify every word of a sketch he'd already written -- shouting down most of those words as soon as Terry'd uttered them. What it meant was that some distant part of Terry wanted to strangle Graham slowly with the bed linens, and that this sketch, this new, strange sketch, was tighter and stronger and somehow more _Terry_ than what had actually gone on-screen. All narrative-y, as Graham had said ( _wait, when?_ ), and absurd, and having all the location shots Terry liked, and Graham looking heroic, and--

That last one was a bit weird, but--

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#11)

Terry opened his eyes. He sat now in a lone train cabin, trying to reread what they'd written. The words slipped, though, and skidded, and he couldn't tell exactly what he read.

Graham wasn't with him. Terry didn't know where he was going, or, Christ, _when_ he was going.

The sun was shining in his eyes. The rails stretched flat and long, with trees in eery, aged rows coming closer as the train traveled farther and farther to a place he did not know.

The smell of pipe smoke lingered.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#1)

"It's a trick question; none of them will ever see Carol's nipples."

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#12)

He opened his eyes on England, and a blank notebook.

Right. Blank pages. Except for all the writing in it, obviously. Terry rubbed his face and read the words his hand wrote without his input.

 _exterior shot, mountain ranges, copse of trees in foreground. All-Aggro with leopard spots painted on lurking in trees. music swells. gazelle from left_

Terry threw his pen with great force. It bounced off the bedroom wall, and didn't even have the simple courtesy to break.

Wait. _Wait._ He, Terry the observer, was the one who'd wanted to throw the pen -- not Terry the actor, the one moving through all this like it was normal and Graham wasn't dead and the Neutron sketch had always had a snogging scene. Terry the observer had wanted to throw the pen, and the pen was thrown, and God only knew what Terry the actor thought about it. Terry the observer -- fuck, the real Terry, he had to be the real one, he was going on 70 for God's sake, that's too many years to just make up in a fit of madness -- he wondered now if he could affect anything else if he really, truly wanted to.

In the distance, beyond the closed bedroom door, he could hear a baby start to cry. Sally. Sally who was in her thirties now, but he could recognize her cry anywhere. Somewhere in this house, this place he lived with Alison back in the 1970s, his infant, middle-aged daughter sounded out. He hesitated, nearly got up, but a moment later the cry faded again. He sat back among the pillows, and wished he'd run to her while the feeling was still natural.

He clutched the notebook, retrieved the pen, and wondered if he was ever going home. _Staying_ home.

The phone rang, jolting him. On the fifth repetition of the third ring, he picked up the receiver. "What."

"Jonesy, you've got to do something with him." It was Mike, sounding young. So fucking young.

"Shan't." The phone was hung up with great force.

 _exterior shot, orchard, MPs dangling from low-hanging branc_

The phone rang.

"Listen, he's threatening to do something mad."

"Like what?"

"He mentioned writing the BBC."

There was a window to the outside world just to Terry's right. "Look," said the Terry that wasn't the real Terry, "I was never good with him. You're the tender innocent, _you_ do it."

"Won't work. I'm _too_ tender, thanks ever so." There was a pause. "Anyway, he already said no. Said he was going to just going to write some letters to see if we could get more shows commissioned. He specifically mentioned menstrual blood, Jonesy, and you know it's going to get us called in again unless you _do_ something."

Christ. "Send Eric," Terry said ruthlessly.

"He's gone into hiding."

"Fuck." Terry did not look forward to the conversation he was going to have to have with Alison. _Sorry, dear, have to go lock myself in a room. A different room, I mean. Elsewhere. With Graham. Sorry, dear, sorry!_

Only a shade better than, _Traveling through time! Won't know when I'm back here again, perhaps best not to wait up, weave me something nice for when I return._

"You'll do it, then?" said Mike.

"I'll _try_." Terry flipped a page in his notebook and wished he had a machine gun. Just because it might be interesting. "Did you come up with anything for that sketch, by the way?"

"Not a jot," Michael said. "Or rather, lots, but it's all rubbish. You?"

"Can we get a prop machine gun?"

"Doubt it."

Terry shut his notebook. "Then no. Just give me Graham's number, would you? And you'd better come up with something while I'm gone, because damned if I will."

He hung up the phone, and all he did was blink, just blink.

[back](http://www.lexneva.name/blargh/drollic.html)

Alison was furious, and Terry didn't know why. They sat across from one another at the dining room table, and it was ocean-dark outside. "Look," he said, "I love her. There it is."

"She's only twenty-one," Alison said tightly.

"A gap of seven years is hardly anything," Terry said, "and I'm sorry if that doesn't fit with your ideals, but I can hardly get married to you if I feel this way about someone else for the first time in my wretched life."

Alison choked, and stared. The anger drained from her face, and a dull fear crept in. "What?" she whispered.

"I know," he said, "it's a complete cock-up, I shouldn't have made a promise I couldn't keep, but Anna's the real thing for me, and--"

"What do you mean, can't get married? Seven years?" Alison said. "Terry, how old do you think you are?"

Terry's hands clenched on the edge of the table. He looked down. The hands were... old. He looked up. "What's the year?" he asked, and Alison's breath went shallow.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#15)

Terry opened his eyes, and Graham's were looking back at him.

"Yes?" said Terry's voice. "And then what?"

It was an odd hour of the night, uncertain and bleary. The clocks were useless. Graham was sitting in the doorway to the loo, and instead of answering Terry's question, said, "You and Michael... anything more than just a writing team?"

Graham had been drinking again. Some more. Had he ever stopped? Terry couldn't remember the last time either of them had slept, so who knew.

"What d'you mean, me and Michael?"

Graham looked irritably at his pipe. It needed refilling again. "I mean, you're a team. You went to Oxford together. Michael's quite fit. Need I go on?"

Oh. "Oh," said Terry. "No. I mean... no."

Graham tamped down on the tobacco. Without looking at Terry, he said, "Ever wanted to?"

 _Yes,_ Terry thought privately. He was old now, the world was a different place, he could admit to a certain slipperiness on the Kinsey scale. The fake Terry, though, the one he was stuck traveling inside, was either a better liar or much more of a stuck-up prude than Terry ever remembered being, because he only said, "Not really." He paused. "What about you and John?"

And it was the wrong question, it was _clearly_ the wrong question, because Graham threw his pipe at the wall and left the hotel room for an hour and a half.

Terry knew he would probably phase out or whatever again before Graham came back, but he wished he wouldn't, because he thought he could probably get enough mental power together to force the fake Terry to say sorry.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#17)

Terry opened his eyes.

Biarritz was a city made out of salmon-colored paint and astonishingly deep sunsets. There were huge rocks jutting from the water, and there was a man on the beach selling caramel ice cream in cones the length of Terry's forearm. Graham Chapman was sitting with his feet propped up on the balcony railing, smoking his pipe and saying nothing as the sun went down.

Their room was best described as "European bland," cheap and drab. Two beds, both clean enough. Their bags were scattered around the room. Knowing Graham at this stage of his career, one of those bags was probably full of gin bottles.

Terry was sitting at the desk. He'd pulled out his notebook, and had opened it to a fresh, auspicious page.

Graham did nothing. Watched the sun, maybe, and then he probably watched the fairy lights come up along the beach. It was... relaxing. Pleasant, if only because Terry literally did not know where else he had to be.

The room was getting dark. He'd have to turn on a light soon. "Shall we start?" fake-Terry asked. The real Terry wished he'd shut up.

Graham looked over his shoulder. "Haven't we, then?"

"What do you mean?"

"I thought we'd been doing so for ages, I'm almost bored of it."

"I don't know how this goes for you typically," Terry said, "but I was under the impression that you actually _did_ something when you and John were locked up together."

"Oh, I've been doing all sorts of things," Graham said lazily, not looking around. "You just can't hear them. In my brain, don't you know. Terribly difficult to notice, I realize, but I expect you'll get used to it eventually."

The fake-Terry tried to say something then, but Terry was done with this. Done entirely. With effort that felt enormous, Terry, the real Terry said, "There's something happening, Graham."

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#3)

Terry opened his eyes. The clock said it was a quarter past, but he couldn't see the hour. Probably because the fake-Terry was busy getting absolutely stinking drunk and watching terrible television. Terry tried to take over again, find Graham, see whether he was before or after what he'd just done -- but the room swayed, and the ocean smelled rank, and the carpet was more comforting than it had any right to be.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#8)

He was writing, and it was _shit_. He shut his eyes deliberately, and hoped he'd jump again.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#16)

"There should be a sex scene," Graham was saying.

Terry opened his eyes, and fake-Terry was shoved unceremoniously into the background. "When am I?"

Graham sat up abruptly. "The prodigal returneth," he said. He leaned forward and peered at Terry's eyes, first the left, then the right.

"What are you doing?"

Graham smiled briefly, with no teeth. "Brain function. Eaten anything strange recently? Alison bash you over the head before you traveled?"

"No," Terry said. "Or-- I don't know. It's all gone strange."

Graham sat back. "You said there was something happening. And when I tried to ask more questions, you asked whether I would mind sobering up a touch, since it seemed I was starting to hallucinate. A bit rude of you, I must say."

"Sorry?"

Graham gestured vaguely. "Forgotten, forgotten. What do you mean, gone strange?"

Terry's pen twitched, and a black mark scored the notebook. _Repeating imagery,_ Terry thought. "I'm jumping around in time, I think. I close my eyes, and I'm somewhere else, some _when_ else, and it's getting unnerving." Graham nearly laughed, but Terry quickly said, "And this thing, this thing where we're here, together, this never happened, not in real life. I think I'd remember _this_."

Graham took out his pipe and stared into the bowl of it for a very long time. Terry tried very hard not to blink. Graham at last said, "And when are you supposed to be, Terry?"

Terry blinked.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#6)

There are words on the page in front of him. Fewer words than before -- earlier, then.

 _a train stops at the station. the train doors open and out steps Mr Neutron. he looks like_

The left-hand side of the notebook has apology notes, all written to Alison.

"Phalanges. Proximal, intermediate, distal. Metacarpus, metacarpels. Carpel."

Graham's pipe had finally gone out, and as he tamped down more tobacco he said, "Scaphoid, lunate, triquetral... Bugger. Oh, right, pisiform."

Terry struggled to take over, but the fake-Terry briefly won out regardless. " _What?_ "

Graham shrugged. "I like the sound of them." He glanced up. "They're bones," he added, a Cambridge man magnanimously explaining the world to a sad Oxfordian.

Terry threw his pen. That made twice now he could affect the fake-Terry's movements as well as voice; there was hope yet. A black mark scored the appalling wallpaper. _Repeating imagery,_ Terry thought, and felt sick. _Repeating, indeed._ Sick, but in control. "This is ridiculous. Do you remember what just happened, or are there different rules for time travel?"

Graham sat up abruptly, pulling his feet from the balcony railing in one swift move that gave truth to years of sports. "The prodigal returneth," he said. He stood up and came over to Terry's chair. He leaned forward and peered at Terry's eyes, first the left, then the right.

"Brain function, yes, thank you," Terry said. He pushed Graham back -- Graham sat on the bed and watched him carefully. "You've already asked me questions about food and Alison. It's none of that, or I don't think so anyway. What do _you_ remember?"

"You said there was something happening. And when I tried to ask more questions, you asked whether I would mind sobering up a touch, since it seemed I was starting to hallucinate. A bit rude of you, I must say."

Terry put his head in his hands. "My kingdom for-- fuck, Graham, we've _done_ this bit. Skip ahead, for God's sake, before I lose myself again."

Graham smoked his pipe and looked down at his knees. They were nice knees, as knees went. He looked up, and Terry resolved to stop considering his friends' body parts. "What time is it supposed to be for you?"

Terry said, "I'm old. I'm so old I know I'm old, and not stupid enough to pretend otherwise." He thought of a girlish laugh, and a baby, and... no, that didn't seem right. What? No, reality was this, whatever this was, and he just had to keep on with it until he matched up again. "I'm old, it's the next century, and you're--" He swallowed, but this was Graham, and Graham, of all people, would understand. "And you're dead."

Graham took one puff, two, of his pipe. "Am I, then?" he said at last. "How disappointing of me."

"Yes, I thought so too," Terry said, and didn't meet Graham's eyes.

Graham laughed, though, and said, "What else do you want to talk about?"

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#14)

Blink one, blink two, and he was still in the hotel room.

"Once you take Augustine into it, it becomes obvious," Graham said. "Sin was a reflection of Lucifer, not a descendant; despite her outward semblance of metaphysical goodness -- Lucifer the Beautiful, you see -- God did not create Sin, and therefore she can be neither perfect nor good nor, on a metaphysical level, beautiful. She's a corrupted form that continues to reflect Lucifer even into his decline into ugliness."

"Hello," Terry said.

"Oh. Hello. Back again, are we? Have a drink, I'm certain you need it."

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#3)

Terry woke up from beneath the desk when Graham poked his cheek with the handle of his pipe. "You need to toddle back home."

Terry blinked up Graham. "I have a wife."

Graham snorted, but sat back. "Yes, and that's where you should be. In the grand future that I'm not entirely sure you're not hallucinating, I'm dead, you're old, and you somehow got in the way of all space and time to go on your own little magical journey. Doesn't make much sense, does it? Have you considered any other options?"

Terry levered himself off the floor. It was high noon outside, and for once there was no breeze. He didn't know what day it was, but by this point he was nearly used to it.

There was an indeterminate meat pie, distinctly un-French and strange in its ugly platter. There was also a huge carafe of coffee, and Terry could not spot any obvious gin bottles.

It was almost like a council of war.

"What other options do you suggest?" Terry asked.

"Oh, dozens," Graham said. "You're having some sort of breakdown in 1974 and it's affecting your time here with me -- though the sketch you're writing isn't half bad, so I suggest you consider breaking down on a regular basis, preferably by contract. Or you're having some sort of breakdown in this distant future you refuse to name, probably because you're growing dotty in your old age and it's making you relive earlier times as if they were the present. Except that doesn't quite explain your 'this never happened' speech, which I think needs to be given its own little parade of theories. Perhaps this entire thing is a complex symphony of symbolic buttercups, and you're just trying to work through your latent homosexual urges by having an immensely overdramatic and, I might add, poorly structured fantasy sequence involving me and a foreign locale. I am, by the way, flattered, but uninterested. I notice that you've left David out of most of this, and I would most definitely have called him several times by now. Would you like more?"

"I don't have latent homosexual urges."

Graham raised his eyebrows, and Terry wished he'd thought a bit more before he spoke.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#11)

The sun was coming up. The notebook said.

 _O.S._

 _Mr Neutron is missing, sir!_

"Graham?" Terry said, shoving back the notebook and rubbing his face.

This was what Time felt like: the back-end of a night that had tasted better when it was happening the first time around.

Graham said, "Hello again. You're getting very difficult to manage. Like a mad aunt that keeps trying to give you toast, for hours on end. I think the other you thinks I'm drunk and raving." Graham looked fresh as a daisy, but his hands shook ever so slightly as they gripped the bowl of his pipe. "I'm starting to think it would be an improvement on the situation."

"How do you mean?" Terry asked, and wished he hadn't a moment later.

"Because possibly you don't have brain damage, now or in the future or whenever. Maybe you're not the problem. Maybe I am." He smiled, and it was ghastly. "Order us some breakfast, would you? I'm terribly sorry that you're having to deal with me drunk out of my skull and clearly mad to boot. To shoe. Eschew all drink, and give forth to righteous calumny. Or something like that."

It was then that Terry noticed the bottles lined up beside Graham's chair, waiting for their turn.

"I don't think it's you," Terry tried, but Graham just saluted him with his pipe.

"Awfully good of you to say, old chap, but I think we both know it's not true. Wake me when it's time to call John, I'm certain it will be hilarious."

Graham turned away, and looked out the window, and nothing Terry or fake-Terry said would get him to turn around again.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#2)

He held his little girl above his head, twirling her in place. "Hallo, Siri," he said, pulling a face, and she giggled at him.

Alison, from the doorway, said, "Sally."

"Hm?"

"You said 'Siri'."

"Did I? Strange." He lowered Sally and smiled like an idiot to make her laugh again.

 _Home_ , he thought, and didn't know why.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#17)

And out again, upon the unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.

[back](http://archiveofourown.org/works/139081#1)


End file.
